Just be aware, if you have stored mixes like bisquick or cake mixes which have baking powder in them. Baking powder has a shelf life, after that shelf life, the bp isn’t stable so your product may not rise and/or may taste funny. Depending on what form of dry milk (powder as opposed to instant milk) is used, that can also make your premixes go bad.
3) the best part? many of them have something that is not advertised on the Internet: 20-lb paper bags of both red and white hard wheat at an amazing price! No, you can’t #10-can them and they can’t ship them, but if you live in a reasonable drive or a friend is going near one, it’s definitely worth a little effort. Again, call ahead and make sure before going.
If you can afford to spend more than $50 / week…. DON’T. You’re gonna make a lot of mistakes in the beginning so, the more your read, the less likely you are to buy overpriced food, guns and gear. Sure, you have to buy stuff but knowing which stuff to buy and having the right skills is much more important. Ideally, you should make a budget and then stick to it.

So, here's another unorthodox prescription for building a comprehensive preparedness plan: develop useful and marketable secondary skills. A simple and enjoyable way of doing so is to pick a hobby you can get passionate about - and then work hard, be very honest about your own mistakes and shortcomings, and try to get better at it every week. You shouldn't seek immediate profits, since progressing from a hobby to a paid occupation inevitably takes away some of the fun; but try to gravitate toward pursuits that could conceivably morph into viable career choices within a decade or so. If you have a family, help your spouse and children pursue thoughtful hobbies of their own, too.

In shopping malls, on mass transit, and in other crowded settings, don't carry your most precious valuables in front or back pockets; a purse is also a clear no-no. Inner pockets of jackets, and breast- or knee-level pockets of pants and shirts, are much harder to muck with. Discreet, slim waist packs or under-the-garments neck wallets work even better. Emphasize to your friends that you are wearing such fashion accessories only ironically; who knows, maybe you will start a trend.
81. Potassium/iodide tablets – it’s wise to store Potassium iodide or KI in your medical emergency kit. This is a type of salt that cab be used to combat radiation poisoning. Potassium Iodide will block radioactive iodine from being absorbed by the thyroid gland. KI (potassium iodide) is a salt of stable (not radioactive) iodine that can help block radioactive iodine from being absorbed by the thyroid gland, thus protecting this gland from radiation injury. The thyroid gland is the part of the body that is most sensitive to radioactive iodine.
While these guides may be made available through Print on Demand services, they're just as likely to be distributed primarily as direct PDF downloads. These get passed around forums, reviewed on survivalist blog networks, and included on "USB survival libraries"—normal USB drives loaded with PDFs of survival books and reference materials. When the guides are being sold directly from the producers, you'll often see them bundled with a few bonus guides (maybe only 15 to 25 pages) with clickbait-flavored listicle-type titles: The 25 Biggest Mistakes That Will Get You Killed When the Shit Hits the Fan. 10 Must-Have Bug-Out Pack Items. The 15 Best Survival Guns for Stockpiling. That sort of thing.
As discussed earlier in this guide, we face surprisingly high lifetime odds of becoming victims of burglary, assault, or other major crime. To deal with this danger, the guide promotes a handful of passive risk avoidance and loss minimization strategies, with the bulk of this advice found in section 3.5. But it would be dishonest to claim that such methods will always shield us from harm - so in this chapter, let's have a look at some of the tools that serve as the last line of defense when all other approaches fail.
I have a Kindle loaded up with a bunch of K12 text books for just that reason, and with my solar panels and battery packs I’ll be able to keep it running for years assuming it doesn’t get smashed. And it’s a lot lighter than a bookcase full of books if I have to bug out. 😉 Right now I have over 1000 books loaded on that Kindle, everything from cookbooks to prepping to classic fiction to school books and lots in between. Almost all of them are freebies…gotta love the free book come-ons that happen from time to time to boost a book’s stats. I’m shameless about grabbing them when they’re free….
Buy dry goods in bulk whereever is cheapest. Transfer into 1 gallon Mylar bags with 1 oxygen absorber per bag. Weight, date and label each bag. Store bags in 2 1/2 gallon food grade frosting buckets available free at any bakery. Each bucket will hold 3 gallon mylar bags. Label each bucket with contents and date. By using these buckets you keep the weight to a manageable level for easy moving. It’s also food grade and water proof. Rotate stock as used. Use the food stoage calculator to figure out what you need and use an excel spreadsheet to keep track of your inventory. Lots of work but you will save thousands in inflation costs and be prepared for almost anything.
If you plan on living in the city after a grid-down no-power survival experience, this book is made for you. I, however, will not be waiting around in my apartment in this ghetto neighborhood for somebody to kick my door in while I'm sleeping and I don't have the ability to stand watch 24 hours a day. This book also is very useful if you own a home or are able to beat the vast amount of bums into one after the chaos ensues. It is entirely based upon living around all of the other desperate human beings an everything that comes along with that human nature survival instinct type of situation. Fitting in, trading, cooking, protecting, and all sorts of other very practical methods for making it by. Jim is very, very knowledgeable about surviving in the wake of a catastrophic event. Even if you're like me and plan on being a woodsman, this is a must-read. No matter how you roll the dice, it is a must-read and must-keep. In addition, he provides several referrals to must-read books and resources. Like going on a guided tour and learning how to make use of the wild right outside your front door. I will be doing just that! The main point I think he wants everybody to know is: Do what you can, while you can, before you can't. Again, read this book and take or leave what you will!
Huffman, who lives in San Francisco, has large blue eyes, thick, sandy hair, and an air of restless curiosity; at the University of Virginia, he was a competitive ballroom dancer, who hacked his roommate’s Web site as a prank. He is less focussed on a specific threat—a quake on the San Andreas, a pandemic, a dirty bomb—than he is on the aftermath, “the temporary collapse of our government and structures,” as he puts it. “I own a couple of motorcycles. I have a bunch of guns and ammo. Food. I figure that, with that, I can hole up in my house for some amount of time.”
There are other ways to absorb the anxieties of our time. “If I had a billion dollars, I wouldn’t buy a bunker,” Elli Kaplan, the C.E.O. of the digital health startup Neurotrack, told me. “I would reinvest in civil society and civil innovation. My view is you figure out even smarter ways to make sure that something terrible doesn’t happen.” Kaplan, who worked in the White House under Bill Clinton, was appalled by Trump’s victory, but said that it galvanized her in a different way: “Even in my deepest fear, I say, ‘Our union is stronger than this.’ ”
Edible landscaping provides another potentially important supplement to your storage foods. Instead of planting ornamental trees, plant fruit trees. Instead of ordinary shrubs, plant blueberry bushes. Fruiting vines, blackberries, and things of this nature are great to have around in the best of times, they can be life savers in the worst of times.
Most break-ins are purely opportunistic: thieves are in and out within five minutes, quickly rummaging through all the places where people usually keep valuable stuff. You can bank on them going through every nook and cranny of your bedroom, looking under the mattress, peeking into every drawer - and grabbing everything that looks shiny and is easy to lift. Their usual targets include phones, cameras, tablets, laptops, jewelry, firearms, loose cash, checkbooks, credit cards, and prescription meds. Vital documents that may be useful for identity theft or benefits fraud, such as drivers licenses, passports, and SSN cards, are also a fair game.

Above all, the nice thing about it is that camping gear doesn't need to just sit in your closet, collecting dust on the off chance that something bad may happen a decade from now. You can simply grab it and head out for the weekend every now and then; camping is fun, doubly so for kids. It's also a great opportunity to test some of your other equipment, and spot potential flaws in your preparedness plans.

Surviving a crisis situation is made easier by being properly prepared. Having a high quality, reliable emergency survival kit can make a significant difference in your ability to get through a crisis. At BePrepared.com, we have a full inventory of prepacked survival kits to handle any emergency -whether evacuation, severe weather events, or accidents.

Before I headed back to Wichita, we stopped at Hall’s latest project—a second underground complex, in a silo twenty-five miles away. As we pulled up, a crane loomed overhead, hoisting debris from deep below the surface. The complex will contain three times the living space of the original, in part because the garage will be moved to a separate structure. Among other additions, it will have a bowling alley and L.E.D. windows as large as French doors, to create a feeling of openness.
You can figure 25-30 years storage life for hard red wheat, stored at 60 degrees in a 55 gallon drum, using 1 pound of dry ice to drive out the oxygen (wait 24hrs for the dry ice to “melt” before sealing the drum). 400 pounds of wheat per drum equals 400 man-days of calories, and costs you about $100. Fill 3-4 barrels. It’s Cheap insurance. Add a barrel of Winter Rye for variety. Add a barrel of oats. Then a couple barrels of WHITE rice, and 2-3 barrels of pinto beans. (You need the beans to balance what’s missing from the grains. The beans may be harder to rehydrate after 10-12 years without a pressure cooker, but then you just grind up the dried beans, and bake them in your bread.) For around $1000, you can be prepared to feed your family for close to a decade, if you also garden, keep chickens, and have fruit trees and bushes. Honey is way too expensive to store on a dollar/calorie basis, but consider bee keeping. A drum takes up LESS than 2’X2’. And they stack nicely, at 33” tall. In a 2’X10′ strip along a basement wall, you can have 10 barrels with 4000 pounds of food. Hang a peg board in front of it, and you’ve got very useful space. If you can’t spare that much space in your basement, to protect the lives of your family, think Venezuela .
And why shouldn’t they? National Geographic Channel’s Doomsday Preppers doesn’t exactly help viewers understand the plight of the average prepper, the one without 60 guns, scuba diving equipment, a bunker and an armored personnel carrier. “I knew going into it that they would try to sensationalize a lot of stuff,” says Allen, a Springfield, Missouri survivalist who refused to divulge his last name; he appeared on the show in 2012 showing off his aquaponics setup. “If Doomsday Preppers had shown typical preppers on a typical day, it would’ve been pretty boring.”
protect the food – by separating the food into sealed smaller bags it protects them from the air and contaminates each time I open the bucket to get food out. I’ve noticed that the bulk popcorn gets less fluffy and a little crunchier over the years as there is more air in the bucket as the popcorn gets lower. When I buy new popcorn I will seal it in smaller bags to keep it fresher longer.
How many mals can you get from a can of baked beans? You can get 14 servings from a pound of beans. Grains of all types can be cooked like rice hence a pound of grain can give you a weeks worth of meals. Plus you can grind them into flour and make bread or pasta, Beans and whole grain keep almost indefinatly but once ground or cooked (even canned) have alimited shelf life. Just a bit of humble advice.

Revealingly, however, many doomsday preppers’ fears are not based on speculative, sci-fi-style catastrophes but on disasters that have already happened. “Watch a documentary about Katrina. Look at something about Sandy, years afterwards. Look at Puerto Rico right now,” Scott Bounds, a member of N.Y.C. Preppers, says. “You have to realize that people are not going to come take care of you. You really have to be able to take care of yourself.”

When the life support system reaches 0%, if extraction is not available yet, the mission ends in failure. Otherwise, all squad members' shields will start draining followed by their health, in a manner similar to a hull breach but at a much faster rate. The health drain will stop at 5 HP for 5 minutes – making any damage lethal – and teammates who are killed can be revived normally. No more life support capsules will be dropped, rewards will no longer be given, enemies will stop dropping the life support modules, and all remaining life support modules on the map will become unusable. After this point the mission can still be completed if at least one player reaches Extraction. However, if all players die, the mission will fail. After 5 minutes, the health drain will continue past 5 HP and will kill everyone.
Shelter: You can make basic shelters with cordage and a tarp. Tarps are very useful in a range of situations. Try this Ozark Trail 8’x10’ camo and green tarp. We need to do more research before determining whether hammocks or tents are better for most people, so sign up for our email newsletter to stay updated if you’re interested in a more dedicated BOB shelter. In the meantime, we love these Kammock Roo hammocks that are about the size of a melon. (For a cordage recommendation, see “Tools,” below.)
This is someone who has embraced the preparedness lifestyle with gusto. These preppers have supplies, knowledge, and skills but are seeking to fine tune their preps with advanced strategies for survival healthcare, living off-grid, and coping with civil unrest. They actively share their own personal experiences with others and offer tips and help other prepper-types learn and grow. I consider myself to be a Dedicated Prepper.
Prepping isn’t just for the zombie apocalypse. I live in costal New England and you can bet that there will be at least two or three situations where you won’t have power or won’t be able to get to the store for a while. Blizzards, hurricanes, etc. Also personal crises like losing a job or unexpected car repairs can leave you looking at zero food budget. Always good to have emergency rations to live off of until things return to normal.
While all plastic will eventually leach into the food product, if you cycle what you are storing out at least every six months, it should not be a problem. Plastic containers are great because they do not break as easily as glass, are cheap, and are reusable. If the plastic containers you are using are clear, it is best to store them in a dark closet or room so the light will not degrade your food storage.
Mason jars are versatile glass jars that are widely available and commonly used for food storage. They have been used for over a century, so you know they are tried and true. You can store dry goods in mason jars or you use them for canning. To use them for dry storage, just load it up with the rice, beans, sugar, or whatever you are storing up to about ½ and inch from the top and then put in an oxygen absorber. Always use a new lid when you store food in a mason jar so you can get a good seal. Put the lid in hot water to soften the seal ring. Then pull it out and thoroughly dry it and screw it down tight on your jar. Using jars for canning is a whole process on it’s own. If you are interested to learn how to preserve food using canning, you should pick up the Complete Book of Home Preserving, the highest rated canning book on Amazon. You will want to store mason jars in a dark closet, since the jars are clear and do not block light. Use sturdy shelves when storing mason jars because the weight can add up very quickly. If you use wooden shelves, you can make your mason jar storage more secure by tacking a strip to the front of your shelves to create a lip. Even if you are not in an area that sees earthquakes often, it is best to be safe with your food storage. You don’t want to create an avalanche of mason jars on accident, and the lip can help prevent this. As another precaution to prevent broken mason jars everywhere, it is always better to build more shelves than to stack mason jars- don’t rely on those slippery glass bottoms!
Though its light weight and long shelf life are ideal for navigating harsh conditions, freeze-dried food is probably most famous as a cultural curiosity: Like many Americans, I discovered it in a museum gift shop, gawking at the styrofoam-like ice cream that astronauts used to have for dessert. More recently, I encountered it at a disaster preparedness convention in Raleigh, North Carolina, where smiling, gray-haired preppers manned tables piled with plastic bags full of vegetables, meats, and stews.
Is it stereotypical that the AARP crowd would be the ones to spend three hours talking about metal detectors and canning and caving at a Pizza Hut on a Monday night? Probably, but that’s what I bore witness to in this event room; its combination of exposed wood and stock-photo decor felt like an Olive Garden inside a pirate ship. Up front, the scraggly white-bearded, Bad Santa–lookalike Andrew: rested one foot on a chair, gripping the mic, just like Randall said he would be.
Scott owns a nice bit of property in the county, over thirty acres, mostly wooded, on which he does some of his own hunting. He had an underground shelter installed somewhere on his land about 8 years ago, a choice that was precipitated by the economic downturn that coincided with Obama’s first term in office. It’s a rather large eight-person, three month shelter, that only his and Josh’s family know about. Even though it was a large investment for him, Scott believes a nuclear or biological threat is less likely that something more along the lines of an EMP strike or total economic collapse. Because of that, much of the shelter acts as secure storage space for a cache of items that would prove valuable in such a scenario: medicine, ammunition, shelf-stable food and common toiletries that will rapidly become luxury items in a post-apocalyptic world. Scott doesn’t think precious metals or cash will be much use if there is no economy to use them in.
I guess I have been taking a longer view. Any disaster will shut down delivery to stores so all fresh greens will stop. I remember that during the same period in history the Polynesian sailors were able to stay out at sea much longer than European sailors and didn’t know what scurvy was. They used bean sprouts to supplement their diet. Last Christmas I asked my wife for a bean sprouter. It has been a lot of fun playing with, eating and learning to work with a multitude of seeds. One interesting fact was that wheat sprouts have an interesting sweat taste. This got me gathering information about what makes good sprouting seeds and it seems that fresh and non-treated (as usually done by our commercial world) is the critical factor. It was about the same time I learned that one of my nearby farm friends has a crop of winter wheat being harvested this July and would have no problem giving me a 5 gal bucket. (@ ~$8.00 a bushel) So I started looking for a food grade bucket and learned that both Jewel and Dominics (grocery stores) go through a number of 5 and or 2.5 gal buckets weekly or daily, (labels usually describe cake icing) for free. Sometimes I have to clean the remnants out, but that’s not to hard and the price is right and they are food grade. I am excited to have fresh wheat and two uses for wheat. Opps I still need to get a flower mill. One step at a time. I have the buckets now.
To get it right, make a list of all your emergency gear, along with expiration dates where applicable. Next, go through the list marking all the "stays home" stuff - the supplies that are impractical to haul around or not particularly essential when evacuating. Make sure that all the tactical gear - such as flashlights, fire extinguishers, first-aid kits, and self-defense weapons - are in a logical and easily reached place. For the remaining "stay home" items, just find an unobtrusive location, stow them away, and write the spot down in your spreadsheet.
Historically, our fascination with the End has flourished at moments of political insecurity and rapid technological change. “In the late nineteenth century, there were all sorts of utopian novels, and each was coupled with a dystopian novel,” Richard White, a historian at Stanford University, told me. Edward Bellamy’s “Looking Backward,” published in 1888, depicted a socialist paradise in the year 2000, and became a sensation, inspiring “Bellamy Clubs” around the country. Conversely, Jack London, in 1908, published “The Iron Heel,” imagining an America under a fascist oligarchy in which “nine-tenths of one per cent” hold “seventy per cent of the total wealth.”
Welcome to CampingSurvival.com, proudly owned by JHL Supply, a veteran-owned, family-run business, established in 1956 in Upstate New York. We are your source for camping supplies, survival gear and survival food, regardless of your level of expertise or experience. So whether you are an emergency preparedness-minded individual interested in MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) and colloidal silver, a hardcore hiker in need of paracord, a water filter system and fire starter, or just need a basic first aid kit or emergency kit for the family, you've come to the right place. As you look around CampingSurvival.com's camping and survival equipment, you'll find that we provide a lot of insight and suggestions to supply and prepare you, so you're always ready for any disaster. However, if you have any questions, we encourage you to contact us, as we will be more than happy to answer them.

Beyond this, stick to your favorite foods and don't feel pressured to skip regular meals - but cut all portions in half, even if it means throwing a half-eaten burger out. Don't go back for seconds, too. It will feel wrong the first couple of times, but it's surprisingly easy to do. That's because portion control is almost completely psychological; your blood hormone and nutrient levels go up only some time after you cleaned your plate. Eating more slowly can make this step a lot easier, too.

Effective preparedness can be simple, but it has to be rooted in an honest and systematic review of the risks you are likely to face. Plenty of excited newcomers begin by shopping for ballistic vests and night vision goggles; they would be better served by grabbing a fire extinguisher, some bottled water, and then putting the rest of their money in a rainy-day fund.
Another popular pick are bolt-action rifles, including Remington 700, Winchester 70, Ruger Hawkeye, and Ruger Precision Rifle. Although there is a lot of variety, many are chambered for larger cartridges ideal for hunting big game (from .243 Winchester to .50 BMG) and are more suited for long-range shooting. For home defense, overpenetration becomes a significant concern.
The C.E.O. of another large tech company told me, “It’s still not at the point where industry insiders would turn to each other with a straight face and ask what their plans are for some apocalyptic event.” He went on, “But, having said that, I actually think it’s logically rational and appropriately conservative.” He noted the vulnerabilities exposed by the Russian cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee, and also by a large-scale hack on October 21st, which disrupted the Internet in North America and Western Europe. “Our food supply is dependent on G.P.S., logistics, and weather forecasting,” he said, “and those systems are generally dependent on the Internet, and the Internet is dependent on D.N.S.”—the system that manages domain names. “Go risk factor by risk factor by risk factor, acknowledging that there are many you don’t even know about, and you ask, ‘What’s the chance of this breaking in the next decade?’ Or invert it: ‘What’s the chance that nothing breaks in fifty years?’ ”

For a while they became my primary source of income, and every single time I was hired by a company that catered to the survivalist market, not a traditional publisher. Each time, the company's name would be listed instead of an author. There are thousands of prepping guides available on Amazon right now— 2,849 in the "Survival and Preparedness" category alone and 4,214 matches for the keyword "prepper" across categories—and only a small percentage are produced by dedicated book publishers. Companies that sell survivalist products and services produce the lion's share, and on any given day, if you peek at freelancing sites like Upwork, you'll see at least a couple of ghostwriting projects dedicated to survivalism being advertised.

When most people start thinking about family preparedness, they focus on food. Not shelter, gear, sanitation, power, self-defense or the myriad of other concerns that need to be addressed following an emergency or disaster situation. Quite simply, food is the number one concern people have second only to their concern for having an adequate supply of water.
A rubber mallet is a great tool to have to seal food grade buckets. Place the lid in its place on the filled bucket, and whack the lid into place around the perimeter of the lid. Once you have secured the lid, you can test for a good seal by picking the bucket up by the lid. The weight of the food stored is a pretty good test for whether the lid is securely attached.
I emerged around eight the next morning to find Hall and Menosky in the common area, drinking coffee and watching a campaign-news brief on “Fox & Friends.” It was five days before the election, and Hall, who is a Republican, described himself as a cautious Trump supporter. “Of the two running, I’m hoping that his business acumen will override some of his knee-jerk stuff.” Watching Trump and Clinton rallies on television, he was struck by how large and enthusiastic Trump’s crowds appeared. “I just don’t believe the polls,” he said.

Lastly, this list is primarily for Sheltering in Place and the requirements/resources the average person would be able to lay their hands on. This doesn’t take more extreme climates into consideration but should still provide a base regardless of where you live. For other lists you can check out our Resources page. For something more specific to the Bug Out Bag checklist, click here. Also this list is going to be missing the specifics of the amounts because each family or individual is different. So without further ado, here we go.

But unless someone starts asking me personal questions, I simply ignore everyone at the store and don’t ask them if they are prepping…I already know the answer. People will know, and there’s not a lot you can do about it. If asked, I simply say, I’ve been reading about emergencies happening with greater frequency around the globe and say that “I’m not going to get caught without at least some food and water” when it happens here. They don’t need to know I’m prepping for a month-long, six-month-long, or year-long, or multi-year-long event. We don’t keep all our food in our pantry and I’ve told my relations that what we have (be it beans or bullets) is no one else’s business–so keep your yap shut
If you have a daytime job or go to school, there is a good chance that the event you are preparing for could unfold while you are at that location - or somewhere on the way. Do you need a special plan to handle this possibility? Can you get back home easily? Do you need water, food, money, or clothes to make that trip? How likely is it that you would be hurt or stranded somewhere?
Many food products will market themselves around a 4 week / 30-32 day / 1 month timeline for one person. Which was fine for us, because we standardize against two weeks but assume that an average household is two people. So it’s easy to buy a “30-day supply for one person” — assuming the calories per day are appropriate — and use it as a two-week supply for two people.
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Awesome article. Really useful tool for assessing where I am in the process. And planning the next step. Once again, Gaye, you give us the important information without the fear. Some walk away from the fear and don’t get started. Some, such as me, rush headlong into the fear and then have a panic attack. So the fear is not productive. I appreciate your style.
This brings us to the "how". In most cases, the absolute minimum water intake is somewhere around one quart per person per day; but note that this assumes no weather extremes, no substantial exertion, and no immediate hygiene needs. When these assumptions hold true, storing about 1.5 to 2 gallons per household member - enough for perhaps up to a week - should provide a viable if modest buffer for short-term emergencies. Store-bought gallon jugs are pretty cheap, hassle-free, and easy to squeeze in just about anywhere; if you keep them away from sunlight and heat, they should last 5+ years before needing to be rotated or thrown out. Don't try to save a buck by reusing milk or juice jugs, though: they are almost impossible to clean properly and may end up supporting bacterial growth.
18. Freeze Dried Options – Just add water! Nothing beats freeze dried foods & having a nice selection of #10 cans in your storage plan is a wise choice. Lots can be said here, and this option will definitely give you the longest shelf life, but it is the more pricey choice. There are some great food companies that offer freeze dried storage packs. 3 reputable food storage companies are:
It's easy to pigeonhole the prepping hobby—and that's mostly what it is, a hobby—as the province of paranoid knuckle-draggers, the kind of people who proudly fly "Don't Tread on Me" flags over their trailers. Who refuse to pay taxes as a matter of principle but complain about perceived wastes of taxpayer money; who anticipate a future race war with what seems frighteningly close to glee; who distrust the president, FEMA, the lamestream media, doctors, and almost anyone else of authority. These people exist.
My two cents worth here. Go with 5 gallon buckets. Many purchased from the local donut shop at $1.25. My variation on Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers — a chunk of dry ice, about 3×4 inches. With this on the bottom of the bucket and little piece of paper towel over it, pour in rice or beans or wheat or corn or a mixture of things. Put the lid on, but do not snap it tight. Wait a few minutes until the bottom of the bucket is not real cold and snap the lid on. Dry ice, which is CO2, forces out the air in the bucket. I recently opened rice and a mixed container which had been sealed five years ago. Everything was fine. Obviously we did eight or 10 of these buckets at once. Got dry ice from the local grocery store. Be sure to wear gloves when handling it.
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he bald snow tires on my ’06 Accord struggled to achieve the grip needed to summit Len Pense’s long, steep driveway. If the grid goes down the way he thinks it will, you’d need a tank to ascend the eroding gravel path because the 83-year-old Army veteran knows exactly which oak tree he’d fell across the route, lest the marauders come for his cache of, among many other things, 44 raised-bed gardens of food. One way in, one way out; that’s what sold Pense and his wife on the 21-acre hilltop property in Strafford some 25 years ago.

Gadget upgrades. If your older phone, laptop, or a TV set are still working fine, keep them for another year or two. Sure, it's fun to play with a new toy, but the excitement wears off quickly, and being a bit behind probably won't make your life feel hollow and pointless. All things considered, you are not impressing your friends that much by showing them that you had $500 or $1,000 to throw away.

You’ll face different potential emergencies in different conditions and during different activities. For example, you aren’t likely to suffer a sprained ankle while kayaking across a bay, but you may suffer from a jellyfish sting. Accordingly, a pain-relieving gel would be more helpful than an ace bandage in your first aid kit. Additionally, you may need a tick-removal kit if your travels take you through a forest, but you’ll find that a sunburn cream is more helpful while traveling through a desert.